Literacy activities are a great way to practice letter recognition. We’ve been playing a lot of ABC games in our house for a while now. My 3 year-old has pretty much mastered letter identification and is now working on letter/sound correspondence. My 2 year-old is just beginning to work on recognizing the letters. He already has a fondness for the letter Ii !
We came up with this Rainbow Letter Sensory Bin ABC Game to fit the needs and interests of both boys. It’s pretty simple to do which is another big plus in my book!
Rainbow Letter Sensory Bin
Materials and Set-up
You will need: a sensory bin, Easter grass, cotton balls, 52 small rectangles of rainbow-colored paper (think ROY G BIV), tweezers or tongs, a marker, a large piece of white or light blue paper and glue
1. Write each lowercase and uppercase letter on a piece of colored paper. Make sure to put corresponding letters on the same color of paper.
3. Prepare your sensory bin by filling it with Easter grass, cotton balls and the 52 letter cards. Set out your fine motor utensils (My boys liked to use the tongs).
4. In another work area, lay out the large paper and glue.
Playing and Learning
1. Have the kids use the utensils provided to “catch” all of the letters.
2. Next, have them sort the letters into piles by color. This was a perfect activity for my 2 year-old.
3. Now it’s time sort each pile and find the matches. We started with red and did one pile at a time.
4. Glue the pairs down on the large paper in the shape of an arch to create a rainbow.
When you are finished, you have a Letter Rainbow! We hung our rainbow on the window and dreamed of warmer days ahead.
Note: When we played, we did steps 1 and 2 and then took a break. Later in the day we completed steps 3 and 4.
This is just one of the fun ABC games that we like to play. For more alphabet activities check out 26 Sensory Digs and Magnetic Letter Games.
For even more spring resources for preschoolers, grab our Spring Literacy Unit. It’s four weeks of literacy learning complete with dramatic play printables, circle time songs, and more.—>Get the Spring Preschool Literacy Unit Here.
Jaimi@The Stay-at-Home-Mom Survival Guide says
It is so great to have activities that children at different developmental levels can complete at the same time. This is a really nice activity and one that I am going to try with my 3 year old-she too has identification of upper case down, but she needs to learn lower case and sounds. I know putting it all in a sensory bin will make it more inviting for her, so this is a great resource for me. Thank you!
Jodie Rodriguez says
I hope it works well for you guys Jaimi. Thanks so much for leaving a comment. I love hearing from readers!